Julie Rose

There's an underground bunker at a radio station in Charlotte, N.C., where time has stopped. Built decades ago to provide safety and vital communications in the event of a nuclear attack, it's now a perfectly preserved relic of Cold War fear that's gained new relevance.

The secret bunker is part of the office lore that old-timers at WBT Radio whisper to the newbies. That's how radio host Mike Collins learned of it back in the 1980s.

In one North Carolina county, mugging too much for a mug shot can get you locked in a cell indefinitely.

First off, though, why would you smile for a mug shot? Thumb through those publications like TheSlammer magazine filled with nothing but mug shots and you can find entire sections of people grinning it up.

Bank of America will release quarterly earnings tomorrow and once again, foreclosures will be part of the equation. The Charlotte-based bank's role in the 2008 housing crash has landed it on a fair number of lists of most hated institutions in America.

But, as Julie Rose of member station WFAE in Charlotte discovered, some of those most involved in cleaning up the aftermath of the foreclosure crisis are beginning to soften toward the bank.

Among the speakers with a prime-time slot at the Republican National Convention in Tampa this week is South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. The speech could propel her into national politics.

The talk about Haley always mentions her gender, her age — 40 — and her race — Indian-American. She wears the labels proudly, and for $19.95 you can read all about them in her memoir Can't Is Not an Option. But there's another label Haley likes: fighter.

On Comedy Central not long ago, she mixed it up with fellow South Carolinian Stephen Colbert:

Organizers of the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., face a bit of a conundrum as they try to honor their party's deep ties to organized labor in a state with the lowest percentage of unionized workers in the nation. Local businesses worry they'll be passed over for unionized competitors, which are few and far between in the right-to-work state.